


The Inevitable Next

by enmity



Category: Tales of Legendia, Tales of Series
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Canonical character hate, F/F, Sibling Incest, arguably this is unrequited but ya, talesfemslashweek2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 16:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20450249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: That was how all Ferines lived, it seemed: carving out a meager existence between one tragedy and the inevitable next. And sometimesinevitablemeant sooner rather than later.





	The Inevitable Next

**Author's Note:**

> "haha what if i wrote thyra/fenimore for day 1 of tales femslash week" - me
> 
> a bit late (very late), a bit messy but i finally did it :^)
> 
> day 1 - first love

The place she and her sister called home had been a village, but now it looked more to Thyra like a ravaged dot of land where one claimed to have stood on, the ground littered with gaunt skeletons of burnt houses and fed with the spilled blood of those once living. People she’d known once, though of course it hardly mattered to Orerines whether the ones they slaughtered bore names or family or any kind of existence beyond that of another body count to their name.

The world only amounted to as much as you could cherish before the Orerines would see fit to take them away. It was a fact she’d always understood well, she and Fenimore both, long before their parents had pulled back the curtain to the truth with their deaths, even before they’d learned about the Merines, or the salvation she would bring.

That was how all Ferines lived, it seemed: carving out a meager existence between one tragedy and the inevitable next. And sometimes _inevitable_ meant sooner rather than later.

–

And now, her sister was dead.

The boat trip from home to the Legacy where Fenimore had been rumored to take residence in had amounted to little more than a lot of silence, solitary and unbroken against the nervous thread of hope pulling taut in her chest, and when the news had at last been passed to her, whispered covertly from the lips of some anonymous man who’d deigned to acknowledge her question, she didn’t quite know what to do at first but stifle her choking with the back of her hand.

“Fenimore died a noble death protecting the Merines. As her sister, you ought to be proud of her.” 

The next moment he was gone, another stranger in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and the thought struck Thyra that it was strange: they were all her people, yet none seemed to welcome her. For once the presence of fellow Ferines failed to give the consolation it usually did.

It didn’t really matter though. Her sister was gone. If the world wasn’t so different from the things you cherished, it might as well be that there was no longer a world for Thyra at all.

–

It wasn’t the Orerines who had taken her sister from her, though. It was the Merines herself.

It was Shirley.

Thyra staggered a breath. The taste of bile clung to her mouth at the sight of the girl. She couldn’t be proud for the sake of her sister. If that had been what Fenimore wanted, then… well, she needn’t think of that. It wasn’t as if the dead could speak.

She screamed and spat and cursed at her all she wanted, until her voice croaked and hot prickles stung the corners of her eyes, and she had to stop lest they threaten to overflow. It did not relieve any of the grief, and neither did it miraculously bring her sister back, though Thyra had known that already. But for a moment she’d drowned out the thoughts in her head with the shrill sound of her own voice, and it suddenly didn’t matter so much that Fenimore had been the only one she’d ever had and now that she was dead too, dead like everyone else she’d ever known and loved—what was left for her now, really?—didn’t she say they’ll always have each other?—the only thing that mattered was that Shirley had taken Fenimore from her, and for that she deserved to pay.

She felt a hand on her shoulder then. “Fenimore accepted us, you know.”

Thyra didn’t know whether she’d rather kill him or throw up.

–

Their mother’s funeral had not been extravagant. Ferines rarely lived long; taking account her frail body and the fact she’d had to raise her children alone, it had been a miracle she had lived past her thirtieth birthday. Thyra couldn’t have helped but wondered if a slow, steady descend had been a better way to die than the bloody alternative their father had faced many years earlier. When it came to Ferines, she thought, life only ever seemed to boil down to unpleasant things.

Either way, their mother was dead, and after it was all said and done, she and her sister were alone. That night, curled up underneath the blankets and too tired to begin wondering about how to go about their lives next, Fenimore, who up until then had mostly resigned herself to muted tears, spoke up. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I wonder if she was happy.”

“About Mother, I mean. I was just thinking,” her sister went on when Thyra only blinked in reply. “It’s silly, I know that. But I remembered— she was always sickly, and she had us to look after too. And… she never spoke about Father much at all, did she?”

“She never seemed _un_happy to me,” Thyra mumbled, though the reassurance came out stilted, thick and heavy with guilt. Her mind swam with memories: some warm, some less so. There were the tender embraces, the bedtime stories, the patient smiles. But she’d never pretended she’d never seen her mother cry when she thought no one was looking—the days when her smile was just a touch too stiff, or when she’d tell them solemn cautionary tales of the Orerines, as though to prepare them for the next inevitable calamity.

How much of it _was_ true, she wondered then.

She wiggled closer, so their noses would be touching if Fenimore were to face her, and there wasn’t much room to do anything besides either cling further to one another or fall off the bed.

Her sister’s eyes were trained to the dark ceiling. “I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love. If all that was only to end up like our mother…”

Thyra sighed to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She poked her on the shoulder, “Today was bad enough. Don’t make it worse for yourself. And besides, just listen to what you’re saying. You’ve never even _like_ liked anyone before. You really think it’s alright to be alone forever?”

Fenimore laughed hollowly, “I’m not alone, though, am I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I meant you, silly.”

“Ah,” Thyra bit her lip. “I guess. But one day something might happen…”

“That won’t happen.” Even in the darkness, she could tell Fenimore’s smile was a sad one. “We’ll always have each other. The Merines will return, and we’ll all be saved.”

“Yeah.”

Thyra smiled back, and pretended not to remember what else it was that she’d wanted to say to her.

–

She’d rushed out of the meeting room in a blind, nauseous fury, ignoring the reprimanding calls of her name, the aftermath of her earlier outburst. The tears were hotter now, already spilling down her cheeks and onto her sleeves, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care anymore.

Had Fenimore really accepted _them_?

She ran, and ran, and ran, until at last she came facing the gravestone that bore her sister’s name, and it was then that she stopped, blood frozen, heel digging into the grass beneath.

It didn’t matter, did it? The dead didn’t speak. She would never be able to ask her. 

“It’s not fair,” Thyra said, over and over and over, and buried her face in her hands, and sunk willingly into the cold embrace of grief.


End file.
